


Time is relative

by FoundFandomFamilies



Series: Warnertales [2]
Category: Animaniacs, DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, So I impulse wrote this after watching NCSDD, The fact that Lou was kind of brushed off after his confession kind of bugged me, u m, why is it being posted now though you asked?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-06
Updated: 2020-02-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:35:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22584160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FoundFandomFamilies/pseuds/FoundFandomFamilies
Summary: Della's back and it seems like everyone’s adjusted to this new normal like magic.Well, almost everyone.
Relationships: Dewey Duck & Huey Duck & Louie Duck, Dot Warner & Wakko Warner & Yakko Warner, Louie Duck & Dot Warner, Louie Duck & the Warners as a whole
Series: Warnertales [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1641220
Comments: 16
Kudos: 193





	Time is relative

Louie shakily climbs up on top of the bathroom counter, dangling his feet in the sink numbly. It was late, well last when he’d normally be asleep, but due to recent events his favourite past time was alluding him. Louie blinks a few times, eyes stinging, and breathing more than a little uneven. The bright light above him is doing more harm than good at this hour, but the young duck can’t find it in himself to go back to bed or even turn it off.

After a moment of debate he sighs, and turns on the hot water, letting it fill up the basin. Some of the water flicks up off his feet and onto his face, but it brings him more relief than annoyance for once. A stray droplet lands in his eye, and he flinches, before taking a moment to tiredly rub at it while the basin continues to fill.

Once he’s satisfied with the level, he turns the water off with a twist and closes his eyes,allowing himself to just...zone out for a bit, letting the warmth take over his mind. He swirls his feet around in the warm water a little, half opening his eyes again to watch it part way and splash around, almost hypnotised by it while he breathes in...and out.

However, his peace is short lived, as his thoughts soon enough begin to race into dangerously territories once more, so he begrudgingly sighs and yanks his mind back to earth. 

He should probably do what he came in here to do in the first place. 

Pulling his phone out of his hoodie, Louie opens up his contacts and presses one of the ones at the top before he can second guess himself. He has more than enough time to put his phone to his ear and start to drift off again before there’s finally a click signifying it had been answered. Perfectly before it was about to automatically hang up, of course. He’d expect nothing less.

“...Louie Duck you better have a good reason for interrupting my cutie sleep or you will regret it. Deeply.” The youngest Warner's voice growls through the speaker, irritation clear. Despite this, Louie finds himself relaxing more. It’s strange, to think, that someone he’d only met a few months ago, had a more calming affect just by talking a sentence to him, than someone who by rights he should of known since birth.

“H-hey you answered.” Louie snarks weakly, shaking his head to get rid of  _those_ thoughts. Dot huffs. 

“Yes, because I love and respect you as my friend. But you better hope that you give me a good excuse right now or that’s changing very soon.” 

“How are you?” Louie just asks instead, wanting to stall as much as possible, “did Daffy manage to get the paint out of his feathers yet?”

“No, he’s still finding pink ones, and answer the question  Louie .” Louie shivers. He was self aware enough to admit he wasn’t a very brave duck, but  very few things managed to terrify him as much as an angry Dot Warner. Especially an already tired one. 

“I...”

There’s a tense moment of silence where Louie finds himself just fiddling with his hoodie, for once at a loss for words. 

How does he explain this? Any of this? Dot wasn’t exactly the most emotionally knowledgeable person, and Louie was presently just a hunched up ball of swirling confusing and overwhelming emotions. He...needed to try a different angle with this.

“Dot...When you and your brothers were first adopted by Bugs and Daffy did it...click instantly?” Louie finds himself asking. He’s obviously caught Dot off guard, because more silence follows. It takes her a while before, 

“Yeesh duckie, not holding back huh?” Dot quips, but her tone is more serious than before, so Louie stays silent, “It's...tricky. At the beginning, I was just too overjoyed that this was even happening, not much else mattered you know? But, once the initial joy wore of it was like, I finally had time to sit down and think about everything and... after that it definitely took some time for things to properly click. It was a weird time period. On one hand, I was so grateful to them for taking us in, but on the other I, suddenly felt like I needed to force myself to love them? When, in reality, I hardly knew nothin about them. It had just been me and my brothers for so long, and, in some part I even felt angry at them? It’s not like they could of done anything about what happened prior to us meetin em, so the anger didn’t make sense! It was like, suddenly everything was okay, and we suddenly just needed to be okay, but even if we acted like we were, we weren’t yet. We might still not be, at least not completely. I’d, I'd finally give up on finding a home ya know? I’d accepted it. So when I suddenly got it, seemingly out of no where, god it threw me for a loop.” Dot lets out a shaky laugh and then goes quiet. 

“Dot?”Louie asks hesitantly, and he can perfectly picture the way she jerks out of her thoughts after seeing it so many times previously when they’d stayed at the manor.

“Sorry, reception went out,” she lies, fairly obviously as well for her standards, but Louie lets it slide, eyes instead briefly flick over to the mirror. He stares at his own exhausted reflection for who knows long, before hesitatingly piping up once more.

“I...I think I understand what you meant. About the whole not being okay when you feel like you should,” Louie's expression suddenly scrunches up as one other part of what she said registers, “How...are you, by the way?” Dot snorts genuinely at this, a sound that by no right should sound cute, but she manages anyways. Her tone is much more brighter too. 

“Yeah yeah worry wart, I’m good. Great even! I’ve got my brothers, and my two Dads, and their friends, and...now I’ve got you too. So, I’ve got all the family I need!” Dot says all of this flippantly, but Louie still feels familiar tears sting at his eyes again, and he quietly excuses himself to put the phone down and wipe at his eyes. Dot makes a small noises of worry. 

“What brought this on anyway? Not that I don’t understand wanting to have an excuse to hear my voice but, you seem off duckie.“ It was Dot's way of asking if he was okay, which he’d been dreading this whole phone call. 

Louie takes a deep breath in, then out, figuring he’s got nothing to loose. Plus, he realises with a bit of a start, he trusts Dot. 

_I wonder when that happened_ , he thinks, before filing it away to have a crisis about later. He's got a different bullet to bite for now.

So time to just rip off the bandaid.

“Mum ca-Della came back. She’s, she’s back now, I guess? Yeah, it turns out she didn’t actually die in space, and has in fact just been living on the moon this entire time?! And no body seems to be freaking out about it except me, like usual, and I-and I-“

Once Louie gets starting, the words just start tumbling back, and he has to physically clamp his beak shut before he says something he  really regrets. This whole thing was a mistake, he was tired and not thinking straight and now his one good friend probably thinks he’s horrible, and-

“WHAAAAAT?!” This, followed by the loud bang of the oldest Warner hitting his head on the bunk bed, if the following creative expletives are anything to go off, is enough to fully snap Louie out of it and almost give him a heart attack in the process.

“Jesus Dot!” Louie hisses, trying and failing to keep his voice down. He knew he was in a part of the manor his brothers couldn’t possibly of heard any of that, but sue him, he was a little paranoid!

“Who are you talking to?” Wakko's distinct sleepy accented voice asks from the top bunk, thankfully drowning out Yakko's long winded explanation of just where he plains to stick a pineapple in the creator of bunk beds. Louie winces guiltily. Great, now he'd ruined all three Warners's sleep. Brilliant work as always Louie.

“The Queen of England,” Dot pipes back dryly, but Louie can tell she’s been thrown of kilter by what he'd revealed.

“Oh, tell her I said hi!” 

Louie finds his face splitting into a small genuine smile as he listens to the siblings bicker, but it faults once he overhears Yakko asks quietly if Louie's okay. Damn that over observant Warner-

“Duckie's mum came back.” Dot explains, tone softer than Louie had ever heard it. There’s silence, before Warner brothers let out perfect mirrors of their sisters previous shriek. Must run in the family, Louie muses, before he’s suddenly bombarded with questions. 

A lot of which are just bewildered “how?!”'s and “where was she?!”, but a majority of them are, “how are you doing?” and “what do you think of all this?” and “do you need us to come over? Cause we will totally steal Bugs's car and come over”.

At one memorable point, Yakko asks if Della is still a looker, which causes Dot to whack him loudly on the head, and Louie to almost choke to death.

Needless to say, they don’t hold anything back.

But, strangely, he finds doesn’t mind their blunt prying, If anything, it feels good to just, have everything out in the open, no walls or invisible lines he has to worry about over stepping.

He talks to the Warners for hours, until the water in the basin goes ice cold, and the sun slowly starts to peak in from outside the window.

He’s tired, and definitely going to regret pulling yet another all nighter soon, but for now, he’s just content listening to Yakko and Wakko bicker about the logistics of whether or not Della could of “eaten parts of the moon to survive, it’s all cheese ain’t it?” (Yakko had snarked back some variant of Wakko being denser than Daffy's last baking attempt, but Louie had been too busy muffling his laughter along with Dot. He had a feeling this wasn’t the first time they’ve discussed this, as no one sounds that absolutely and utterly exasperated about moon cheese unless he’s had to explain it multiple times to a younger sibling before. Huey could probably attest to this)

He still feels as lost as before when it comes to his Mum, but he doesn’t feel like he needs to come to a decision anytime soon either. And he feels less horrible about himself for not knowing what to feel either. 

Yakko had probably said it best.

“Your Mum's been missing your whole life kid, intentional or not, that’s a good excuse as any to not immediately open someone back with open arms. She's your family by blood sure, but it’s up to you in the long run about whether or not you want to accept her. Things aren’t obligated to be okay just cause you’re biologically related. I mean, you’re not close with your brothers because of genes right? You’re close because you’ve been with each other through thick and thin, and you trust each other. At the end of the day, that’s all family comes down to. Even if you don’t ever forgive her, you’ll always have your brothers, Webster, and your Uncle Donald. Heck, even old grumps, whenever the Scott sticks his head out of his money bags. Ehhhh, so don’t stress it Green. Things'll work themselves out.”

Yakko's unashamed bitterness to Scrooge aside, he was right. Back at the table, Louie had felt so isolated from the rest of his family. It had felt like he was the only who wasn’t over the moon (heh) that she was back, and it hurt. But, he knew they were just processing all of this at their own pace as well, even if they weren’t out rightly showing it. It wasn’t like Louie didn’t  want Della to be a part of their life, because...he really did. He...he wanted his _mum_. He'd wanted his mum his whole _life._

He just wasn’t ready now that he finally had her,

But, he knew his family would be there with him until he was. 

So...things aren’t completely okay. But they’re not completely not okay either, and that’s good enough for Louie for now.

And, Louie privately adds to himself, as he sings delightfully off key to Dancing in the Moonlight along with the Warners and not even caring if he wakes up someone up, he knows they'll be there too.

**Author's Note:**

> This was kind of an unedited mess wasn’t it heh?  
> But, if ya did manage to get to the end, I hope you enjoyed it! 
> 
> Title taken and then loosed related to this is from When you're travelling to Nantucket, a song that shouldn’t be as good sounding as it is, but Rob Paulsen is just like that


End file.
